Cloud Platform Release Announcements for June 12, 2017

This is a blog post for a new, ongoing series of consolidated updates from the Cloud Platform team.
We’re here to help you embrace the cloud. Realize your true potential with our unique innovations, comprehensive mobile solutions, and developer tools across the breadth of our product portfolio. To help you stay current, here are our latest releases.

Esri and Power BI Integration Launch | general availability

Esri, a global leader in geographic information systems (GIS) mapping, will offer general availability of ArcGIS Map control inside Power BI for both Power BI Desktop users and Power BI Pro. The map control will be available in both the service and the desktop. Esri ArcGIS mapping solution will be available as an additional in-product visual for Power BI users who are looking for advanced GIS capabilities for their data visualization and analysis needs. Combine authoritative data layers on a map and apply spatial analysis to gain a better understanding of the data. Learn more about these new developments at the Power BI Esri blog and the Power BI Esri Landing page.

We recently introduced three new VPN gateways to the Azure VPN Gateway service (VpnGw1, VpnGw2, and VpnGw3) with significant increases to both bandwidth and service-level agreement (SLA).

VPN
Gateway

Recommended
Workload Type

Price
($ per hour)

Throughput
Benchmark

SLA

S2S & V2V Tunnels
($ per tunnel-hour)**

P2S Tunnels
(Max)***

Basic

Dev/Test

$0.04

100 MBps

99.9%

Max 10
1-10: included

0

VpnGw1

Production

$0.19

650 MBps

99.95%

Max 30
1-10: included
11-30: $0.015

128

VpnGw2

Production

$0.49

1 GBps

99.95%

Max 30
1-10: included
11-30: $0.015

128

VpnGw3

Production

$1.25

1.25 GBps

99.95%

Max 30
1-10: included
11-30: $0.015

128

** Benchmark data obtained by running iperf3 between VNets in the same region, with minimum duration of 120 seconds and up to 32 flows. Refer to this page for more details on how to measure throughput across your Azure VPN gateways.

**The first 10 tunnels are included free of charge.
***The first 128 tunnels are included free of charge.

Guidance and recommendations

Of the existing tiers, the Basic tier will not change. The Standard and High-Performance tiers are being replaced with VpnGw1, VpnGw2, and VpnGw3.

Currently deployed VPN gateways will not be changed automatically to the new tiers and will retain current performance and pricing. However, we recommend you consider migrating your existing gateways to one of the new tiers. The new gateways could provide up to five times more performance for the same price. Learn more about pricing.

After September 15, 2017, we’ll retire the ability to create new Standard and High-Performance VPN Gateways.

SQL Analytics, a solution based on Log Analytics, will help manage and monitor your SQL databases. Enable visibility into the health, performance, and utilization of your SQL databases using dashboard views, with detailed reporting and alerting built into the solution. Collect and store related metrics, search and query the stored telemetry, and correlate and visualize the results to detect, triage, and respond to issues before they impact your users. This is available as part of Insight & Analytics in Microsoft Operations Management Suite.

We’re pleased to announce the preview of an increase in the maximum eDTU limit per database in Standard elastic pools. This limit has increased to as much as 3,000 eDTUs with new click-stop choices starting at 200 eDTUs. These higher limits are especially well suited for databases with activity bursts that demand more CPU than previously provided by Standard pools. For IO intensive workloads, Premium pools continue to provide the best performance experience with lower latency per IO and more IOPS per eDTU. To learn more about SQL Database elastic pools, read the Azure blog.

Cognitive Toolkit | general availability

Microsoft’s high-performance, open source, deep learning toolkit is now generally available

The Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit version 2.0 is now in full release and available to the public. Cognitive Toolkit enables enterprise-ready, production-grade AI by allowing users to create, train, and evaluate their own neural networks that can then scale efficiently across multiple GPUs and multiple machines on massive data sets. The 2.0 version of the toolkit, previously known as CNTK, started in beta in October 2016, went to release candidate April 3, and is now available for production workloads.

The open-source toolkit can be found on GitHub. Hundreds of new features, performance improvements, and fixes have been added since beta was introduced. Three new features we’d like to highlight are Keras Support, Java Bindings and Spark Support, and Model Compression.

Cognitive Toolkit is being used extensively by a wide variety of Microsoft products, by companies worldwide with a need to deploy deep learning at scale, and by students interested in the very latest algorithms and techniques.

Remote assistance on Android devices just got better with Intune and TeamViewer’s expanded integration. With the combination of Intune and TeamViewer, your helpdesk team can now start a remote assistance session with your end users on Android devices, making it easier than ever to help users with training, support issues, or step-by-step walkthroughs.

The TeamViewer Quick Support device application can be pre-installed through Intune for a streamlined device experience. Even if the TeamViewer application isn’t installed on the device, the Intune Company Portal will walk users through the process of installing the Quick Support application during their first remote assistance session. All features of TeamViewer including chat, file transfer, and device details, can be used with this integration.

A TeamViewer license is required to take advantage of this functionality. Please visit the TeamViewer site for more information and licensing options. Learn more about using Intune with TeamViewer on our documentation page.

Microsoft Intune | Intune on Azure general availability

The new Intune and Conditional Access admin consoles are now generally available.

Managing Intune and Conditional Access together with Azure Active Directory (AD) just got easier for our rapidly growing community of admins. We’ve reached two important milestones for Microsoft Intune and for Enterprise Mobility + Security Conditional Access capabilities—both new admin experiences are now available to the public in the Azure portal.

Microsoft Intune—a redesigned admin experience now available in the Azure portal

Moving Intune to the Azure portal represents an admin-centric redesign of our console. The process of migrating capabilities into the new portal was an opportunity to reimagine the entire admin experience. This new experience is an expression of our unique vision for mobility management shaped by the needs of our customers.

Intune on Azure is a big step forward as—users can now manage all Intune mobile application management and mobile device management capabilities in one consolidated admin experience, and take advantage of Azure Active Directory grouping and targeting seamlessly as well.

If you haven’t tried Intune on Azure, we invite you to jump into this new experience with us by logging into the Microsoft Azure portal.

Conditional Access—the new admin experience in the Azure portal

The new conditional access admin experience is also available to the public today. Conditional access in Azure brings rich capabilities across Azure Active Directory and Intune together in one unified console. You’ve been asking for more integration across your workloads and fewer consoles—this does exactly that.

With conditional access, ensure that only appropriately authenticated users—from the compliant devices, and under the right conditions—have access to your company’s data. . The new conditional access experience on Azure makes the power of our technology obvious, displaying the deep controls you have at every level in one consolidated view.

Now you can easily step through a consolidated flow allowing you to set granular policies that define access at the user, location, device, and app level. Control access to resources based on a user’s sign-in risk powered by the vast data in Microsoft’s Intelligent Security Graph. Once your policies are set, users operating under the right conditions are granted access to apps and data. As conditions change, controls kick in to make sure that your data stays secure. These controls include:

Challenging a user with Multi-Factor Authentication to prove their identity.

Prompting the user to enroll their device in Intune.

Blocking access all together or even allowing you to wipe a device.

We believe we’re uniquely positioned to deliver solutions that are this comprehensive and sophisticated yet easy to operate. With Enterprise Mobility + Security, scenarios like these are possible because we’re building them together from the ground up to deliver on a unified Microsoft vision for securing productivity.

Access the new console in the menu within both the Intune and Azure AD blades.